i have been absent, not least due to a series of reasons that have occupied both my academic and personal life.

respites aside, i am currently assessing the possibility of renewing my ‘blog-o-sphere’ membership and, if i do decide to answer the above pondering in the affirmative, the conditions under which ‘signonthebrokenline’ will continue will also be subject to an equally pedantic analysis.

Diversiﬁcation can be deﬁned as providing all things “different” with an opportunity to argue in front of an ironclad tradition that prefers to continue entertaining what it knows and is comfortable with, rather than attempting – and subsequently failing miserably – to genuinely explore the currently nebulous and precarious void that is “different.” “Different,” “being different” and “different for the sake of being different,” however, are not only theoretic conceptualizations or normative pedestals onto which all hope for change is often placed, at times by the academic zealots of yesterday, but also equally invested tyrants that continue to aggravate the very social blister that they tirelessly try to cure. What creates a cause for concern then, is not that “different” has continued unfettered, but that “different” is actually beginning to retaliate after years of neglect and abandonment. Its owner, the carnivorous open market, is no longer interested in supporting its petulant thirst for surreptitious inequality and behind the scenes collusion. All of a sudden, the pretexts of merit, no longer carrying with them sufﬁciently wealthy and compelling substance to dictate otherwise, are incapable of negotiating with the claws of impending defeat.

To the foot-soldiers of the legal profession, marching to the beat of “different” may make public relations sense, an anomaly that modernity has failed to address. But to the efforts of those who genuinely wish to incorporate “different” so as to ﬁnd perspective, open previously unexploited markets and deconstruct the myths that drive assumptions, “different” is but a platitude that is to be recycled for the purposes of extracting, pound-for-pound, the value of having access to a global, rather than a local, pool of opportunities. And so, the question that asks whether the legal profession would beneﬁt from aligning itself with the regurgitation-friendly complications of retaining “different,” is but a foregone conclusion. “Different” is and should be, ﬁrst and foremost, a choice, albeit one that may be inﬂuenced by the amount of black ink that is drying on a balance sheet at any one time. Conversely, “different” should not be a reﬂexive reaction to a frenzied political charade of mind-numbing populism that imposes a preference for homogeneity by replacing pragmatic business considerations, realties and choices, with a homogenized mix of merit, afﬁrmative action and academic ﬁst-pumping. This would be a complete waste of time, the end result of which would offer a valueless bag of equally harmless hypothermic solutions to a problem that is at best non-existent, given that “different” is and should be, as it has already been mentioned, the outcome of a choice and not the prerogative of an anticompetitive regime.

you want to save the world and make use of the complicated. let’s bemoan and let’s be pathetic. let’s depress the objectively deflated and inflate the pathologically insane. figure eight shows you the picture of a duck with training wheels, carefully imagining itself in a world of mass hunger and rabid determination. we’re starving our flocks to write this story and so you should keep being inept and press the ‘donate now’ button. it makes me feel good when i tell you this; it makes you feel even better when you jump aboard this ideological 747 with me. i, you, them, we, deity. all fabrications, with green smokestacks, emitting a purple wave of eccentricity with a positive charge and forty-four days left to procreate. subliminal delineations, danger. squeeze, tighten, fortify, splendor. adapt.

what is the generation thunder that roars beneath your feat, you incredulous tiger of misaligned ubiquity. ask. question. depress. you test your capacity to enlarge by postulating the maturity levels of iron at seven, 4 and thirty-3 years. impossible is possible, just think about it… just make it possible. it’s insanity (all over) when i hear you yelp from across the road, asking for help, disguised in a matter-of-fact gluten-free substance, poised to penetrate. you wish to change, to manage, to massage, to exacerbate, to complicate, to memorize, to show frigid temperatures how to fake the orgasm of amorous professions. or maybe you want none of these things and all of them at once, a paradox among the living, a choice dilemma that confounds the unannounced forces of faux-finished material textures.

go, for yourself, for others, for the benefit of the corrupted few who hold power, devour powder, speak louder, excrete madness and impose the word “rather.” how do you echolocate the entire sound alphabet, as it is spoken by a demented goat, born out of wedlock, its original creator a combination of an acidic substance and an opulent fissure of the most pernicious (but promiscuous) existence. light is a ray and if photos are edible, your subconscious and maniacal tendencies and contrived proclivities can all continue taxing the willing, at the expense of increasing your exposure to risk-free ultraviolet machinations. print, copy, x.

ambivalence is an investment, a radical departure from the convenient features of yesterday, a realization that tomorrow will undertake to completely water-down your nightmares while accentuating your dreams to the point of an introverted culmination of fat-free lipids and kleptomaniac-like reward schemes. but you continue, you continue along the predetermined path of your ethically challenged 99-meter sprint towards dystopia. or perhaps i have become more adept at storytelling than you used to be. possibilities are exponentially raised to import suspicion, but in your case, you infer speculation, add hyperbolic sensationalism and remind your opponent that within the farce that exists the orifice of comedic brilliance, there exists something that is not only available and you can call your own, an offspring, a progeny of mild-mannered motivators, but something that none of us can ever internalize, even if by means of employing harsh light and enlightened inconspicuousness.

my solutions are equally blunt. i can repackage hysteria and resend it. i can .pdf your mannerism and send it back to you, equally possible, especially when reply-all stares the effects of destiny directly in its jealous (and esthetically morbid) face. you have chosen out of a lack of choices. you have created your demise by failing to foresee possible (and expected) alternatives. and now i wish to implode and sideline my own detrimental (to your health) -isms for the sake of procuring a toothless lion, enclosed in a hamster cage, with the same help mode as a surrogate 19th century barn fly.

ready, set, go. attack, pant, begin to flaunt, oh my – is that kant? seriously. go fetch, go play, go emotionally decay. this blister is a complete disaster and someone just called me over to start the other side of their intricate project called casper. what a scene, full of fluffy fluffs fluffing about, can you believe such ignorance, i can’t tell you how happy i am to have experienced another way to lament. oh, continue, don’t abrogate, dictate, dictate…

[scene one]

[a small-ish rat occupies a space. a grandiose entrance, provided by some ill-advised sponsor, is entertained by a piece of cheese…]

[l… c… a…]

[“hello,” yelps the larger of the two. “perhaps you can guide me to your destination,” continued the belligerent, but this time with more gusto and perhaps even more empathy. i left the two alone to mingle and directed my attention to more pressing trifles, like the platter of duck confit that had arrived, just in time for the wetting of my palate. before i could ingest the floral display of apathetic violence, reconstructed for me by a magician of gastronomic “ooomph,” tragedy had struck. the legal person they called cheese, a blotched, half-empty placeholder, had already, rather desperately, forced its way into a container. it was hiding from the disaster. to spill more acid onto the intimately cancerous scene, monosyllabic doctors, competing for their own cubed foot of oxygenated diarrhea, all kept pushing alongside my leg without excusing themselves, perhaps on purpose. this entanglement further contributed to the pandemonium. the cheese was nowhere to be found by the true authorities and the obvious was lying naked on the floor, suffocated by the pungent smell of an unclassified piece of cheese…]

[this became, of course, a case no longer worth trying, never mind in front of a hot fudge, otherwise known as a fissure between an already widening gap; it is because of such influences that innocuous proper, playing with fire, will often burn at the same temperature as ulterior motives begin to congregate at.]

[r.i.p. rat, 547 grams, four inches tall, 11:43AM to 13:00PM]

there is an exclamation mark that gains perspective whenever you approach it with such sense of appreciation that your decoy is deconstructed the moment it senses and if containment is not preferred, it will also eat significantly more.

Who cares if the disingenuous ant wanted to fight the mischievous caterpillar. Let’s be honest, really honest about this two-toned machination that only started becoming a problematic after the loaded-gun effect entered into the equation. So she was provoked! Big deal, alright! Matters of this complicated nature are a daily occurrence and by no means should be treated as statistical anomalies that fail to materialize. Her defence lawyer argued many-a-times, in previous proceedings, the ant’s propensity or for you schoolchildren of a more respectable social class, proclivity, for a pugilistic one-two after the ingestion of four pints into its depressed cavity.

Either way, you’re all insane, utterly mind-numbed. If you really believe the prosecution in this instance, you are only creating precedence for what is already quite obvious, namely that the man-made statute, erected for the benefit of the public at large, is now being appropriated by those with sufficient ulterior motives, to make me want to discontinue vomiting following a session of gorging on “propaganda popcorn.” Ah, such unnecessary evils.

My suggestion to the mother caterpillar is to stop playing one petulant child off another and rear-end herself into a different cause, preferably at a speed that can provide for her injury as well. No, nothing less than that proposition can ever be entertained and if less is suggested, I shall decree with the intention to repress and if my perfect state of imperfectness ripens by that point in time, oppress as well. Regardless, this cultural drama is creating a state of affairs in which I cannot, at least this time, do my best to avoid. Circumstantial evidence aside, my self-diagnosis is telling me that if I continue, psychological harm might just be recoverable, provided that my persuasive essay grades are high enough to convince a toothless but no less effective geriatric, perched atop an infant’s stool and with the moral savvy of a, pardon me, inflatable orangutan (sans the orange hair), that I, above all others, need legal treatment in every sense of the two words. Take this offer as you find it, I am not willing to sacrifice more of my continued perseverance, so that you may find yourself yelling at a television set without probable cause but most likely with an insanity conviction shortly after the foundation for the prosecution, a blind congregation of near-sighted bats, with four-year plans and a penchant for ridiculously low-rates, discovers that inside your chaotic but surely idiotic exclusion clause, you have hidden the terms “in no way” and “liability,” so as to inflict upon those less brilliant, a harm that lacks both an intention to ridicule and the act itself.

This all brings me back to my initial claim, in which I have every right to demand that I be reimbursed for my losses under the Fake Names Act 1429. My black-belt in corruption shall be honoured and principle will succumb to your will only insofar as you will bend to my desire for corrective justice in the playground. It is time the elephants met me in my office, or, if so desired, down at the Zoo, where we all can partake in the ginger petting of innocuous animals for the promotion of the public good. Otherwise, if the dinosaurs get here first, and I do mean what I say, I will only be open to negotiations if they furnish me with polyester dentures – must be made somewhere, anywhere will not suffice – and a carton of desperate vocal chords that were stolen from a location I will provide you with once I have made myself aware of what it is that I want to steal.

Repudiate at your own risk, but I do warn you that the offer is final and if you provoke me, unilaterally, arbitrarily and absolutely binding too.

Note: If you find the act of swallowing hard, please seek professional advice from a confectionary salesman. They’re trained to alleviate matters of such discomfort and will only recommend the most noxious of pleasantries, if of course, such are deemed necessary to cure your anxious but rather macabre depression.

Surprisingly, or rather incredibly, I did not have to blame myself this morning for wetting my bed – it just happened. Naturally, the consequences were always relevant. However, incoherent ignorance kept itself in-play for long enough to allow my conscious to regain temporary control and, once all of this sustenance shenanigan took flight – into God knows what dimension – I got my slippers and went to the washroom.

On my way to the release, I noticed something uncomfortable about my left arm. It wasn’t that I have never seen this appendage before, but just that it stuck out like a monster peeking from under my bed. On purpose, I forgot all about this nonsense and continued my journey. I had to get a smaller apartment, I reminded myself, while shuffling my feet without realizing it. Soon, I got tired and did not feel like visiting that repository of sad memories. I turned around. Was it really already noon? It really is incredible how life ticks and tacks and all I have to show for it is a careless shuffle that, if you were to ask me yesterday, is really nothing but an attempt at recuperating what has already been done. And now, I remembered the soiled sheets and the impossibly far walk back to my room.

Thirty minutes later, I find myself standing in front of my dilapidated single mattress, absorbing the ammonia that had begun to befriend the friendlier of the more contemporary air molecules. It was uncomfortable, a decision to continue felt like a move towards embarking on a belligerent journey without any remorse or mercy. Adding to the list of faux-pas ingredients, the cancerous and blatant reality that stood erect before me, had already acquired a sort of look on its face that only sterile commercialists would have been able to understand. I took the entire transaction as a patronizing exercise in playing dumb… the imminence of a future purchase being, for the most part, a determinist component of my free-agent existence, all bundled up in gift-wrapping and ready for shipment. It is not that I was shy or that I had retraced my steps so as to reconsider. That I certainly did not.

I jumped, eyes closed, straight into the deep end. Warmth was to be expected. The whole experience, from tail to head, was nothing but uncompromising. My tired set of deprived follicles, fortified by the loosely hung smug-like smile on my face, provided the entertainment the entire time – depression was circumvented and the closing ceremony promised salutations of a high enough degree to justify torture. I also have to add that it did, however, feel surreal… like I had just gained forty-three pounds in one sitting and didn’t even bother to make a genuine note of what had transpired in my telephone book. Either way, while suspended in mud, crawling uphill, screaming, kicking, discouraging profanity but really failing heroically, it all ended. It all ended. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my suspicious right forearm and made myself proud by piling the remains in the corner for ‘another time’ – same genome, different species – to concern itself with what would happen next.

And then the phone rang. It did sound like the voice of a man who was liked, but certainly not by many. Maybe. This incredible tempest of pent-up-ness, came through with so much assertion and certainty, that I felt comfortable enough with my own demeanor to continue the conversation. He asked why I was naked. It all felt strange. In anger, I addressed my trespasser with an even more unlikely answer. “My washer is broken and I have nothing to wear.” This apparently concerned me more than the man on the other side of the temporary but dyslexic chaos. After silence was interrupted by a slight inconvenienced sigh, I became so disengaged with what this creature of promises had to say that I simply lowered the item into which I was previously speaking onto the table on which it was geographically located and walked out of the room in which my person was previously compelled to enter into.

Clothes. Where was I going to find clothes for today’s adventure? The floor provided a wide array of options, choices and half-stale alternatives that really didn’t hydrate my palate to such an extent so as to convince me to make exceptions. I was adamant by now that the only possible items of clothing that I felt even slightly ambivalent about wearing today were going to be the ones that I was going to purchase in the immediate future (perhaps a future more immediate than distant), right after I showered and ate a small but no less nutritious breakfast. The thought of where I was keeping the fridge aside, what made this decision even more salient and perhaps solidified my desire to distance myself from this excruciatingly warm establishment I called ‘my home,’ was the obvious reality that I now had to enrich others for my own mistakes. On the one hand, the necessity for new sheets made sense, they were not going to be reused, especially not while my washer was hopelessly out of order for a time undefined. But the clothes? Why the clothes? They were an unnecessary added extra, an unfortunate and spontaneous irrelevancy that left the conundrum unresolved, for I had yet to shower, breakfast-up, find a solution to my mad intransigency and also take my life off hold. Or, possibly and with little shame, confront the famous philanthropist that just rang, with the sort of unfettered desire that even married nuns have difficulties with.

Today I wanted to speak to you through a different medium, a different formula. You understand don’t you? Before I woke up today, my smallest toe on the left or the right foot – I don’t remember – decided to depart from the bigger picture and smell the roses on its own. This came as a surprise to me. I have never before had to discipline a martyr; never mind a dissenter. Martyrdom. Pregnant with ideas about what I was going to do to this microcosm of a problematic, I dispatched mother apathetic to cleanse its soul and extort, ever so preemptively, any future references to how the dinosaurs laughed before… you know… the BIG BIG BIG meteor surprised the unsuspecting. Coy.

So let’s feel the vibe. Slightly ever so imperfect, who are these canaries anyway? Joe the machinist surreptitiously invited me to his wife’s pre-birth celebration. I am lost and beyond confused. Why must I acquiesce to impossibilities of this nature? Either way, I’m going to bake her a dozen or so drama cookies and just post-date their arrival until I feel like it. Who needs a social anthropologist to apologize – I can do it on my own, regardless of the consequences.

Now the fire that broke out at 4 past 3 today was definitely intense. My God was it ever bright. By the time the fire parade came to diffuse the time-seeking heat bomb, I was on my way out the door, jacket in hand, preparing for the worst. On my way to the bus stop, I came upon a simple mind who needed directions to the avant-ridiculous procession that had gathered to observe authority defeat the monsters in their heads. Shame, really. I told him that I had no sense of direction and that he should probably pursue other more obvious alternatives. Definitely need to get a Dictionary and figure out how this City works. The bus finally came and I got on it. Once Inside, a grave disorder appeared to have taken over those commuters who had felt it necessary to increase their volume for no apparent reason. It was nothing – a man had forgotten his sister’s birthday. Either way, I listened until my stop and got off. At the lights I made a left and walked until I reached some sort of neo-post-modern contraption. By this time, it started raining. Not having brought along my prophylactic, I got wet. It wasn’t long before it stopped. A man yelled across the street and his intention was to get my attention. I turned my head around, like a conditioned citizen and focused in on this creature of agitation. It was him, the man who called me the day before to ask for my assistance with some sort of out-of-context historical reference. I waved and crossed the street.

Before I reached this predetermined destination, a further distraction appeared to have led me along a different path. Perhaps this time, or at the very least for the time being, temporariness was to provide me with more benefits than otherwise. Incredibly…